Chapter 294

With the cold temperature setting in, it’s getting harder to emerge from the warmth of the blankets. I was still in my cocoon at 6:45 and the dog kept poking me with his triangle face and almost ripping my nostrils with his prominent lower teeth acting like a fish hook. “Five more minutes”, I pleaded, uselessly, and unable to hold it in, he peed a giant yellow puddle by the front door. Sometimes I wonder how I still manage to be a somewhat functional adult.

I still took him out and he ran around for a bit. Then I went to supervise lab periods. The students were doing titrations, a supremely boring analytical chemistry method, and one that requires them to be meticulous and careful. Some got the hang of it already, and realized that by being sloppy, you don’t save time but rather you waste time. Others got results all over the place. At any rate these weaker grade-eleven classes are doing much better when they’re in the lab, it’s almost as if there were different kinds of intelligences, personalities, aptitudes and interests, that make some people nearly damn incompatible with the “sit in place for 10 hours a day and memorize high-IQ shit” lifestyle. If I was the king of the world, I’d have a lot on my plate in order to make this fucked up gangrenous better, and one of my priorities would be to revamp the education system to make it less one-size-fits-all.

(And yes, I’m aware that there are already many avenues, and our English-language advanced program is just one of many. Therefore, the blame isn’t just on the system. Don’t the parents of these kids consider the possibility for half a second that maybe, just maybe, their child is not thriving in such an environment? I have ideas regarding the matter, and it goes beyond the scope of this humble diary.)

I listened to the Metal Minded podcast, with album reviews. Deviant Process’s album was compared to the golden age of Quebec metal and bands like Quo Vadis, Martyr and Augury, and I couldn’t agree more, it’s a fucken great slab of tech death. The other albums didn’t tickle my interest.

I went home for lunch, the dog had shredded some of the girlfriend’s construction paper. I put him in jail and left him there all afternoon. One day his tiny brain will learn. I ate fried noodles and a bowl of gumbo and watched political analysis. Young conservative John Doyle was talking about the old guard of Democrats and how they push for pragmatic no-nonsense social-democratic measures to support the working class in concrete ways, contrasted with the new breed embodied by Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, with a much more radical far-left-wing agenda. He says that the latter could doom the party, but I’m honestly not sure about that. It seems like A LOT of people love AOC and her petulant 15-year-old white girl demeanor and political views, and with the amount of media attention she gets, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see her as being groomed for an eventual presidential run. Now that would be a weird timeline.

I had another lab in the afternoon, and a class with the strong eleventh-graders. They’re way ahead of their counterparts, because of that glitch in the scheduling that gives me three periods a week with them instead of two. Consequently, I just went over the homework and gave them free time.

Then I rode home, relaxed for a bit, and went to the gym. I’d been feeling a bit down recently, perhaps my body is craving those endorphins released when lifting heavy-ass shit. The problem is my mp3 player had been malfunctioning, and didn’t charge when I plugged it. Damn. I wanted to listen to black metal. At least the gym doesn’t play shit-awful music, all I heard was the rhythmic humming of the treadmills and people loudly counting reps. My workout was great, and I walked out of there satisfied.

I had a big meal of leftovers and watched a few history videos on YouTube. Then I started reading a novel called Le Plongeur by Stéphane Larue. I saw a thread of modern Quebec literature recommendations the other day, and I bought a few e-books already.